Motorcycle Parking

M

mindactivated

Active Member
In your city, is motorcycle parking free? If not, how do you pay for street parking without the ticket blowing away in the wind? Can you park on sidewalks?

The reason I'm asking is because the City of Toronto has voted (Nov 30, 2011) to get a report from one of their committees to see the feasibility of charging for motorcycles & scooters again. They made it free sometime around 2006. There's a huge thread on GTAM on it already and didn't see one on here, but I figure since this site is more international I'd like to hear your thoughts on the subject. Should the motorcycle community pay for parking like everyone else?
 
It's a mixed bag here in Philadelphia. It depends on what part of town. Officially, parking on the sidewalk is prohibited, but only selectively enforced.

My daughter parked her bike on a very wide sidewalk near where she worked for a year, with no issue. The city put in some motorcycle specific on-street metered spaces nearby, then she got a ticket. Now she parks in a more discreet back street.

In certain places around the city, they will ticket a motorcycle that is parked on the sidewalk on a major street, but it is not enforced on smaller side streets. In residential streets, people park on the sidewalk in front of their house without a problem.

Any city should encourage motorcycles by providing free motorcycle parking to reduce traffic congestion.
 
They started charging for downtown parking on the weekends/nights here in Austin, but it doesn't apply to bikes, since their meter system relies on stickers affixed to inside windows on cars. Front row everywhere I go ;)
 
Don't park your motorcycle in downtown Chicago specially in between cars, on sidewalks or alleys, the city will impound your bike for free, but you have to pay to get it out. The City of Chicago doesn't inforce j-walking so there has to be some space between cars for people to walk between them. But if you find a good parking spot and pay the meter you should have no problem.
 
Yeah I am also in Toronto and think its bullshit. I've seen a bunch of bikes get tickets (re: they tuck the ticket in between the gas tank and the seat of some other shitty spot) but it is my understanding that you can fight them and win pretty easily. Only problem with that is that it takes time and pulls you away from work. In my opinion, parking your bike should be free... Our parking ticket system doesn't work for bikes as somebody could just steal the ticket off of your bike for themselves...
 
You guys have to PAY to park? Don't you already pay property tax, and vehicle tax, and road tax added to the price of gas, and sales tax for the businesses you park near? ???
Small town FTW! 8)
 
4eyes said:
You guys have to PAY to park? Don't you already pay property tax, and vehicle tax, and road tax added to the price of gas, and sales tax for the businesses you park near? ???
Small town FTW! 8)
Click to expand...

You forgot astronomical insurance costs. I currently pay $550 CAD a year for my motorcycle insurance, and I think that is insanely CHEAP. My friend's RC51 costs him $187 a month ($2250).
 
The cheapest parking for my motorcycle (if I drive it regularly) is purchasing parking from my employer at $65/month, which I do. Parking on the street in the area of down town where I work is limited to 2 hours and motorcycles have to pay the meter also. The closest daily pay lot is 5 blocks away and $5 a day.

When you get a ticket on your motorcycle here they tape it to your seat or fuel tank and it bakes in the sun.. Parking on the sidewalk will get your motorcycle molested and towed to a yard where they're likely to store it upside down.

That just reminded me of this picture I had :)
122_0807_01_z1976_BMW_R90S_steve_mclaughlinupside_down_BMW.jpg

BTW - He walked away from that!
 
I'm a college student at St Cloud State University in MN and here is something really annoying. There are a bunch of rich kids here who for some reason bought mopeds to get around the campus. They are street legal models and most of them gas powered, but the ridiculous part is they ride them on the sidewalks AND on the roads. They will be riding down a street, hop off onto the curb, and then ride it right up to the building and park the moped in the bike rack!! This is so stupid because if I brought my bobber here and tried to do that I would get a ticket for sure... you can't just hop a motored vehicle onto a sidewalk and use it as a road but since they are mopeds I guess they let it slide... ticks me off...
 
JohnGoFast said:
Holy shit, my T250 costs me a whole $6.00 a month for insurance and is covered at $8,500.
Click to expand...

It's futile comparing Ontario insurance to American insurance.
 
Anyway back on topic: Do you guys think it's reasonable to want free parking for 2-wheeled vehicles, or should we pay just as much as cars?
 
The city should provide free parking for motorcycles, they help cut down polution, less traffic, and I'm sure studies (someone has done them) would show that motorcycles don't park nearly as long as cars..
 
That would suck if it changed but with Rob Ford running this city, the gravy train has got to stop somewhere! Fuck I hate that guy.
 
Makes me think of a community near me, New Hope, PA. The cops there are notorious for harassing riders, and it is on a popular riding road along the Delaware River.

It used to be that if more than one bike would park in the same parking space, they would ticket all the bikes in that space. Merchants complained that bikes were taking up too many spaces. Then they started allowing multiple bikes in a single car space. If the meter expired, they would ticket all the bikes in that space.

They've also been known to go along a line of parked bikes with a mirror looking for the EPA stamp on the exhaust. If a bike had aftermarket exhaust, they would ticket it.
 
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